Friday, May 11, 2007

Hello illustrators.Got a question for you.What do you do to warm up before coloring a children's book? Do you sketch? Work on your quote unquote "real art"? Scribble meaningless doodles at random?

As warm-ups go, Jon Buller wins the award for Most Original. His answer? Tarot Cards.

I ascribe no supernatural powers to the Tarot myself, and don't believe it can tell you anything that, in some sense, you don't already know. But sometimes it can be interesting to apply a set of arbitrary symbols to a particular situation and see what commentary or solutions are suggested by the cards.

I love it. You see artists creating their own tarot all the time, sure. How often do they come up with their own suits though? And so straightforward too. Look at the instructions. I think every illustrator should follow Jon's suit (hee hee) and create a tarot. Can you imagine the Mo Willems Tarot? The Adam Rex Tarot? The friggin' Tomie dePaolo Tarot? The mind boggles.